Hypnos: Notes from the French Resistance, 1943-44

A hero of the WWII French Resistance and an esteemed poet with Surrealist roots, Char (1907-88) composed this beautiful work by quarrying and condensing phrases, sentences, and paragraphs from the secret notebooks he kept during the war. The result%E2%80%94238 brief prose units, published in French in 1946%E2%80%94mixes harrowing anecdotes about executions, parachute drops, and clandestine meetings; evocative, mysterious single phrases; and good, if sometimes portentous, advice. "You don't need to love your fellow men to be of real help to them," Char says; "All you need is to wish... to prolong for a second some agreeable moment in their lives." His proclamations%E2%80%94at once practical and ambitious, secular but sublime%E2%80%94connect Char less to other poets than to other wartime essayists, especially to his friend Albert Camus. (When Char lets the Nazis kill a prisoner, in order to prevent them from razing a village, we hear his reasons%E2%80%94and we feel his regret.) Yet Char was a frighteningly inventive, dense poet, and his fiery images come through, too: "the present" is, for him, "an embattled parapet" from which you might "Sing your iridescent thirst." Mark Hutchinson's new translation keeps Char's prose vividly concise, yet somehow a bit apart from Anglophone rhythms, as befits such a proudly French work. (Sept.)